Run Lola Run Essay

German: Lola rennt) is 1998 German thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer, and starring FrankaPotenteas Lola and Moritz Bleibtreuas Manni. The film’s three scenarios are reminiscent of the 1981 Krzysztof Kieslowski film Blind Chance; following Kieslowski’s death, Tykwer directed his planned film Heaven. The film was released on DVD on 21 December 1999and on Blu-ray on 19 February 2008. Run Lola Run screened at the Venice Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion. Following its release, the film received critical acclaim and several accolades, including the Grand Prixof the BelgianSyndicate of Cinema Critics, the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and seven awardsat the German Film Awards. It was also selected

as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Filmat the 71st Academy Awards, though it was not ultimately nominated.

“Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.”
- Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman

This roller-coaster of a film established Tom Tykwer as one of the most exciting writer-directors at work in European cinema. In part its success is due to the charismatic personality of Franks Potente “Lola”, but even more it’s the tremendous narrative verve of the film that grabs the spectator by the throat from start to finish. Tykwer tells us that the spur for the film was an image of a woman running, and from this developed the concept of reversing the normal format of a feature film. Some twenty minutes of action would be stretched out to fill four times that extent, instead of compressing a huge amount of story material into regular feature length.
So, in this film, Lola faced three 20-minute runs. Every run, starts as every run but then changed at a point arriving to a completely different ending; as if every run has a totally different story!
Lola, a girl that looks in her 20s with a red hair, having a stomach tattoo. She lives with her mom and dad that seems that they’re not having a good relationship. Lola’s dad is a banker that is having a secret relation with a woman working with him. Looking to Lola’s emotional life, she has a boyfriend called Manni that she had to run for his life and not for her own!
Lola receives a frantic phone call from her boyfriend, Manni, a small-time criminal who has collected 100,000 marks cash in his most recent crime. Lola had agreed to meet Manni and drive him to deliver the money to hiss boss, Ronnie.However, when Lola’s moped was stolen and she failed to arrive on time, Manni took a subway train. As he did not have a subway ticket, Manni panicked when he saw ticket inspectors and got off the train, thoughtlessly leaving the bag containing the cash behind.From outside, he saw a homeless man examining the money bag as the train departed.Manni calls Lola from a phone booth and tells her that unless he raises 100,000 marks to give Ronnie within 20 minutes, Ronnie will kill him. Lola’s plan is to find the money somehow, somewhere, in 20 minutes only! Manni’s plan is to rob the supermarket facing him if Lola couldn’t make it after 20 minutes. Lola starts to think of who might help her get the 100,000 marks. She decides to go to her dad and to ask for his help. Lola’s first run starts! RUN, LOLA, RUN!
She starts running down the staircase of her apartment building, past a punk with a dog( as cartoon scene) . She runs down sidewalks and the middle of streets, arms pumping, bright red hair flying, stomach tattoo wrinkling in time with her footsteps. While running, she meets people that are altered in each story. She collides with a woman pushing a baby carriage, who is shown to later steal a baby after having lost custody of her own. Then Lola runs alongside a cyclist who offers to sell her his bike, which she refuses; a flash-forward shows him being robbed on his bike, but later marrying a nurse from the hospital in which he recovers. Lola then causes a minor car crash, which involves her father’s colleague, Mr.Meier, and three men in a white BMW.She even passes by the bum without realizing it! As Lola arrives to the bank, she passes a banker shown later to be paralyzed in a car accident, then killing herself. She then meets her rich dad, asks for the money from him, but he refuses to give her and he tells her that that he’s planning to leave home and marry his mistress, and throws in for good measure:” I’d have never fathered a girl like you. You’re a cuckoo’s egg.” Lola’s father escorted her out of the bank. She then, runs alongside an ambulance that narrowly misses crashing into a glass pane being carried across a street by several men. Lola continues her run to meet Manni, who is about to commit the robbery. She shouts his name, but he doesn’t hear her and he enters the store holding his gun. Lola is forced to help Manni when a security man interferes. As the get the money, they exit the robbery, and start running, but they find themselves surrounded by police. Manni throws the bag that contains the money they stole up in the air, which lead a police officer to accidentally shoot Lola in the chest!She laysdown on the floor and starts seeing a series of conversations between her and Manni as they lie in bed, viewed in close-up, from above and through a red filter that renders the dialogue more intimate, even secretive. Lola refuses to die:” I don’t want to go..”
Tykwer re-started the film from the beginning, the second story begins, Lola’s second 20-minute run begins! She starts running down from the staircase too and tripped by the man with the dog. Falling down the stairs, Lola injures her leg, which makes her limp temporarily. Running to the bank, she collides with the woman pushing a baby carriage, who later wins the lottery and lives a life of luxury. Passing the cyclist, she accuses him of stealing the bike he is selling; a flash-forward shows he becomes homeless. Manni, again borrowing the blind lady’s phone card, unsuccessfully tries to borrow money. After causing a slightly car accident between Mr. Meier and the white BMW, Lolaarrives at the bank. She asks her father to give her money but her father refuses to give, but she didn’t gives up. This time Lola leaves the bank, but then comes back, grabs the security guard’s gun, takes her father hostage and robs the bank. A flash-forward shows a banker she passes falling in love with a colleague. Lola is confronted by the police, but escapes because they mistake her for a fleeing bystander. Passing the ambulance, Lola asks for a ride, distracting the driver and causing him to hit the glass pane. She continue running to Manni. As she arrives to him, she shouts Manni’s name, and this time he hears her. Mani walks towards Lola, only to be run over by the speeding ambulance. He dies.Now, it’s the time for his death, now it’s the time for the same bed conversation scene, he asks her how she would cope with his death… Manni refuses to die too! It’s not the right run again. The film returns to the present and shows the dying Manni.
It’s time for Lola’s third 20-minute run.

She leaps over the punk and his dog. She avoids the woman with the baby carriage, who is in flash-forward joins a church and devotes herself to God. Lola also narrowly misses the cyclist; he offers his bike to the homeless man (the man that took Manni’s bag in the subway train). Lola falls into the glass of Mr. Meier’s car, preventing his car accident with the white car, which he then goes to Lola’s father and pick him. While Lola is running to her father’s bank, she sees them drive away. She tries to stop them but they didn’t see or even hear her. She continues running and is nearly run over by a truck. She then stops and sees a casino across the street. Having only 99 marks, she convinces the cashier to give her a 100 mark chip. She wins two times (over than 100,000 marks) , in the first time she wins by her luck and in the second time she wins by her voice! She screams and she wins! At the same time, Manni spots the homeless man passing by on a bike, with his bag in the basket. Manni takes back his bag of money and in return he gives the homeless man his gun. Lola arrived to Manni’s place but she cannot find him. She then sees a car pull up. Manni and Ronnie get out of the car and shake hands. Manni joins Lola and asks her what is in the bag she is carrying. The film ends with a freeze-frame on Lola’s

reaction.
Twyker gives us three to choose from, throwing us into the Sliding Doors/Blind Chance alley of alternate realities. You can essentially pick your own ending, each of which offers its share of irreverent surprises. Sandwiched in between the alternative storylines are soft-focus scenes of Lola and Manni reflecting on life and love. These sequences serve a dual purpose: to allow us to catch our breath and to deepen our sympathy for these two intensely likable characters.
Saturated with irony, the film moves at a blazing speed to the accompaniment of a relentless techno soundtrack; blink and you’ll probably miss a thrown-in visual gag. Using an innovative mix of animation, still photography, slow motion, and normal cinematography, Twyker illustrates how the smallest change in what a person does can alter the rest of their life.
Run Lola Run is essentially a film about itself, a closed loop of style.

Movies about characters on the run usually involve a linear story, but this one is basically about running and about the way that movie action sequences have a life and logic of their own. I would not want to see a sequel to the film, and at 81 minutes it isn’t a second too short, but what it does, it does cheerfully, with great energy, and very well. Combining the best elements of a mainstream blockbuster with low-budget European sensibilities, Twyker has created breathlessly exhilarating cinema that will satisfy multiplex-goers as well as arthouse lovers, in other words, exactly the sort of movie that Britain ought to be

making.

The most beautiful thing that i as a viewer noticed, is that Twyker sheds lights on the power of women !As if he’s saying that women hold an occupation that gives them great authority, influence, and responsibility.
This article contends that such readings willfully disregard the celebration of human spirit that underpins Lola’s efforts to save her boyfriend, Manni. It proposes that the film is, in truth, a modern fairy tale that does not seek to deflect us away from the problems that face us in the modern world, yet reinforces the value of optimism and hope as we seek to create the world as we would like it to be. Moreover, in the wake of events on 9/11, one could argue that the message of the film has acquired even greater importance at the beginning of the twenty-first century when we need, perhaps, to take a less abstract view of the world nd get on with living life!